But when you consider the amount spent on the election and that every million dollars could generate $60,000 in annual dividends if conservatively invested (staying clear of high-yield, high-risk investments) it gets a little upsetting to realize that the same money could have provided 360,000 people with health insurance forever, or sent 180,000 people to college every year. Forever.

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“I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”

The bottom line of it all is this - when you consider how much money was spent on the campaigns, added to the amount of tax revenues not being collected from major companies and then coupled with the enormous waste perpetrated by the same companies* you realize that America can quite easily afford decent healthcare, education & infrastructure for everyone.

*Eg: Halliburton during the Iraq war racked up all sorts of interesting invoices. $45 for a 6 pack of coke. $100 per bag of laundry. $7000 pm for a lease on an ordinary car. The empty convoys they ran. The trucks they had the army destroy when they broke down. Change an oil filter? No, blow that fucker up and request a new one for $80k. Not to mention that they got a $1billion tax REBATEthis year.

Or there's tech companies like Apple & Google who fucking LOVE LOVE LOVE the loopholes. Apple kindly paid less than 2% tax on all their foreign sales.

But no. America is broke. We just can't figure out how to make Social Security work anymore.

The bottom line of it all is this - when you consider how much money was spent on the campaigns, added to the amount of tax revenues not being collected from major companies and then coupled with the enormous waste perpetrated by the same companies* you realize that America can quite easily afford decent healthcare, education & infrastructure for everyone.

*Eg: Halliburton during the Iraq war racked up all sorts of interesting invoices. $45 for a 6 pack of coke. $100 per bag of laundry. $7000 pm for a lease on an ordinary car. The empty convoys they ran. The trucks they had the army destroy when they broke down. Change an oil filter? No, blow that fucker up and put request a new one for $80k. Not to mention that they got a $1billion tax REBATEthis year.

Or there's tech companies like Apple & Google who fucking LOVE LOVE LOVE the loopholes. Apple kindly paid less than 2% tax on all their foreign sales.

But no. America is broke. We just can't figure out how to make Social Security work anymore.

Yep. It's pretty disgusting.

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“Call me sentimental, but there’s no-one in the world that I’d like to see get dysentery more than you.” — David Nicholls (One Day)

From the very start there were warning signs. After signing up, you were invited to take part in nightly conference calls. The calls were more of the slick marketing speech type than helpful training sessions. There was a lot of "rah-rahs" and lofty talk about how this would change the ballgame.

Working primarily as a web developer, I had some serious questions. Things like "Has this been stress tested?", "Is there redundancy in place?" and "What steps have been taken to combat a coordinated DDOS attack or the like?", among others. These types of questions were brushed aside (truth be told, they never took one of my questions). They assured us that the system had been relentlessly tested and would be a tremendous success.

Just read an interesting Krugman piece that mentioned a poll showing that a majority of young people preferred "socialism" to "enterprise", and suggested that this is an unintended consequence of reframing the social saftey net as "socialism".

A kid looks around at social security, a progressive tax code, and a repiblican-proposed healthcare system and thinks, "if this is Socialism, I guess it's not so bad."

Just read an interesting Krugman piece that mentioned a poll showing that a majority of young people preferred "socialism" to "enterprise", and suggested that this is an unintended consequence of reframing the social saftey net as "socialism".

A kid looks around at social security, a progressive tax code, and a repiblican-proposed healthcare system and thinks, "if this is Socialism, I guess it's not so bad."

Just read an interesting Krugman piece that mentioned a poll showing that a majority of young people preferred "socialism" to "enterprise", and suggested that this is an unintended consequence of reframing the social saftey net as "socialism".

A kid looks around at social security, a progressive tax code, and a repiblican-proposed healthcare system and thinks, "if this is Socialism, I guess it's not so bad."

That is a great point! Also, unintended consequences.

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“I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”

You know, I learned in like, grade school civics that a threat on the life of the POTUS is an act of treason. I guess they forgot to include that little tidbit on the standardized tests after NCLB passed.

You know, I learned in like, grade school civics that a threat on the life of the POTUS is an act of treason. I guess they forgot to include that little tidbit on the standardized tests after NCLB passed.

Expressing a hope that the President gets assassinated is not a threat, though.

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“I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”